Fig. 4
The intercellular junctional complexes between the endothelial cells in the retinal vascular unit. The intercellular junctional complexes are formed between the retinal endothelial cells, which comprise the tight junctions, adherens junctions and gap junctions. Tight junctions are composed of occludin, claudins, JAMs, and ESAM. Adherens junctions consists of VE-cadherin, N-cadherin and β-catenin. Gap junctions are formed by connexon, which is assembled by 6 connexins. The junctional complexes between the retinal endothelial cells are the molecular basis for the integrity of iBRB, which establish a physical barrier to solutes and water. ESAM: endothelial cell-specific adhesion molecule; iBRB: inner blood-retinal barrier; JAMs: junctional adhesion molecules; N-cadherin: neural-cadherin; VE-cadherin: vascular endothelial-cadherin. This figure was created with BioRender.com